Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..

Donuts on Bellevue Way – Back In The Day

It ruled our breakfast, long before Americans ever had the notion to choose a gluten-free bagel. In the decades leading to your morning stand in line – behind a person ordering that bagel with a Grande Fair-Trade extra-shot Nero Esprimere – there was another breakfast combination which could be found on the corner of every town from coast to coast:

Coffee and A Donut.

This sweet, chewy, epic breakfast adventure – made from fried dough and glazed with a love spread of shiny sugar – is heaven sent and worthy of consumption with a strong cup of coffee. There is no combination like it on the planet, and it continues to draw fans even in these days of healthier eating. Why? To some it may be a mystery for the ages, that a food so bad can be such good business. But for me it’s no mystery at all; last year I wrote about my love for donut shops which serve coffee, instead of the other way around. Donuts are in my family heritage. In a world where the tasty underpinnings of a slower life have eroded to make room for eating a healthy something-or-other with the consistency of sandy cardboard, the American donut stands as a legacy food with history and tradition to match.

And to celebrate that tradition, in the past many of us found ourselves eating at Winchell’s Donut House.

Winchell’s was a favorite of mine when growing up in Seattle; we had one at the 13200 block of Aurora Avenue North (it is now Aurora Donuts). Even my favorite Eastside donut shop – Westernco at Crossroads – is a former Winchell’s location. Considering there also was a Winchell’s at the corner of NE 4th Street and Bellevue Way, our city had at least two outlets and possibly more. Sadly, they are now long gone from our region. A quick check of locations finds the closest Winchells to Bellevue is in Salinas, California.

Denied.

The photo above – courtesy of Eastside Heritage Center – was taken in 1987 at the Bellevue Way location. Two squarish examples of 1980s auto awesomeness stand at the ready in front of the shop: a Chevy Sprint and a Dodge K-Car (seen an example of either one lately?); no doubt both cars were scrapped or completely undriveable within five years of this photo. Since I lived in Seattle at the time, I have just a vague recollection of this Winchell’s location; I was only an occasional visitor to Bellevue back in the day. That said, it didn’t seem right for my abbreviated experience to be at the core of this article; it actually made more sense that I ask for help from people who would have enjoyed donuts first-hand from that location, which was convenient to both Bel Square and Bellevue High School. So I turned to a couple of friends who both attended Bellevue High and had much to share about the area.

“Winchell’s!!!” Mark Lange wrote when I emailed him the picture above. ”Definitely bought donuts there!”

Mark made an interesting point in his reply, something which showed just how much the Pacific Northwest’s love for coffee has changed – even in 25 years. ”Weird to think that I would go to a donut shop with no intention of getting coffee,” he says. ”Coffee wasn’t even on our radar. Not to mention there weren’t fancy flavors yet.”

Mark went on to recall how he and his Wolverine buddies bought a dozen donuts at Winchell’s before heading to his house to watch WWF videos. ”We really knew how to party,” he commented with a winking emoticon.

My other friend with insider info was Trisha – also known as Reader/Blogger Eastside Uptown Girl – who had extensive detail to share about the shop and the surrounding area, enough in fact that I couldn’t capture it all here!

“The Winchell’s was an H.Salt Esquire Fish n Chips place in the early 70s,” she commented, “and was famous for its malt vinegar.” Like her, I also remember the H.Salt food chain and that awesome vinegar; it really was good stuff. As a child our family ate at the chain’s location on what is now Martin Luther King Jr Way in Seattle. According to Trisha, H.Salt in that building gave way to Winchell’s in the late 70s. After that it also became “the big police hang out for obvious reasons!”

But Trisha’s memory didn’t stop at mere donuts.

“Behind Winchell’s in the late 60s there was a tiny house that was called The Store,” she continued (in Seattle during that time we had The Gob Shoppe). ”It had all sorts of black light posters, incense, jewelry, and upstairs it had this bedroom with beads hanging in the doorway and a waterbed where all the teens, myself included, would sit and bounce around during the weekend shopping excursions to Bellevue. They also carried ‘love beads.’”

The spirit of that little head shop lives on today, at Psychedelia on 156th near Crossroads.

On the other side of Winchell’s in the photo above we can see Tape Town. ”[It] was there starting in the late 60s and was THE place to take your car for expert eight track installation,” Trisha wrote. The work was done in the back alley, which still exists today as an abbreviated road that runs behind all the businesses along that stretch of west-side Bellevue Way. Inside, Tape Town also had a large selection of tapes and car accessories. According to Trisha, “It was quite a hang out for guys.”

With so much history hovering over this intersection, these days the view from the street is very different.

It’s hard to tell what building compares to the older photo. Nothing looks the same. The parcel that is right on the corner of Bellevue Way and NE 4th is now city land, with no structure on site at all. The two buildings closest to the corner – the jeweler and Mod Pizza – were built in 1961 and 1951; that means either building could be in the 1987 photo. What we do know is this: The Store is gone, and the parcels to the west are now part of Bellevue Downtown Park.

While the view of this section of Bellevue Way is hardly comparable to its older depiction, the memories from Trisha and Mark – along with many others – can keep “Vintage Bellevue” alive. It’s okay to tip our hats to the past, because doing so can only enrich and round out the experience of the folks who live here. While our legacy on the eastern shores of Lake Washington isn’t as deep as other settlements, it is still diverse, interesting, and worth preserving. My favorite era – Mid-Century America – is still well represented in Bellevue, and worth highlighting for generations to come. We are now a city of nearly 130,000 – many of which have only moved here in the last five to ten years. At a recent history display at Crossroads Mall, many of these new residents were soaking up the history like they had never seen anything like it.

To them I say, “Welcome…have a donut.”

Next time we go exploring the well-beaten paths and fringe corners of the largest city on the Eastside. Until then, enjoy the view!

Note: This is a seattlepi.com reader blog. It is not written or edited by the P-I. The authors are solely responsible for content. E-mail us at newmedia@seattlepi.com if you consider a post inappropriate..